Idiom: to “call it a day” …. to stop doing something (usually related to work)
Category Archives: Vocabulary
Google Quick Draw
Quick Draw is an app from Google – mostly for fun. You are told to draw a picture of something. (Look up the word in Google Images if you don’t know it.) See if Quick Draw can recognize your picture in less than 20 seconds!
How Many Words Do I Know?
On testlanguages.com – 
- Mark each word on the first page
– if you know it very well
(If you aren’t sure about the word, don’t mark it.) - Press
- Mark each word on the second page – if you know it very well
- Press
At the end, they will tell you about how many English words you know.
This is mostly just for fun, but if you study some vocabulary, and then take the test again a few months later, your score should increase a little.
There’s another website to test your English vocabulary called TestYourVocab
Free Rice
Practice your English vocabulary and grammar on freerice.com. 
Every time you get an answer correct, a small amount of money (equal to about 10 grains of rice) is donated to help end world hunger.
- When you answer correctly, the questions get more difficult.
- If you get the answer wrong, the next answer will be easier.
- This is the new version, which is better for smartphones and tablets.
If you have a computer, you may prefer the original version. - There are many other categories you can try, such as geography, science, math, and other languages.
Halloween Vocabulary
Here’s a much longer list of Halloween words – with definitions.
How Big is My Vocabulary?
There is a website called testyourvocab.com that helps give you an estimate of how many English words you know. This is not exact, and mostly for fun. But if you try it now, and then try it again after you have practiced a lot of English, you should see that your vocabulary has improved.
Suggestions for taking the test:
- This is easier to use on a tablet or computer (rather than your phone)
- Don’t check a word unless you really know it well. If you just think it sounds familiar, don’t check it.
- At the end, it will give you the number of words calculated for your vocabulary. Save this number, and then compare it with the number you get when you take the test again.
Try to learn a new English word every day, and you’ll be pleased with how your vocabulary grows!
365 Short Stories
The website eslyes has a page with 365 very short stories. Each one takes only a few minutes to read. You can also listen to each story (in normal or slower speed). After you read and listen to the story, there are several exercises you can try.
Here’s some more detail:
- To listen in slow speed you need to press the speaker button to the right of the title.
- The number after each title in the list is the reading difficulty. A higher number means it’s more difficult to read
- Exercises include
- Vocabulary
- Yes/No questions about the story
- Crossword puzzle
- Dictation of some sentences in the story
- Fill in the blank (Cloze)
The Top 100 English Words
Here is a list of the 100 most frequently used English words. About half of everything you read in English will be these 100 words! Do you know all of them? If you don’t you can learn about them with the Learners Dictionary. 
If you would like more, here is a list of the 1000 most frequently used words:
- In order of how often they are used
- In alphabetical order (with links to definition and pronunciation)